


FEALTY

by pudgy puk (deumion)



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: 1 Sentence Fiction, 50sentence, Gen, challenge, gen - Freeform, ishgard, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 14:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20116264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deumion/pseuds/pudgy%20puk
Summary: Fifty sentences about Ishgard. Originally written during ARR.





	FEALTY

**Author's Note:**

> I was reminded of this thing’s existence and went diving in my old folders to find it—I wrote this before Heavensward was even announced, and I thought it held up surprisingly well.

#01 - Walking

There’s more of it nowadays than there used to be, what with the snow drifting over even elezen knees, slowing the pace of life in some ways while speeding it up in others: the long walks and quiet journeys through pine forests iced like cakes or mountains glazed over are all quite lovely until the wyverns arrive to remind everyone that the Horde is not so constrained.

#02 - Waltz

Brought from Ala Mhigo, the waltz enjoyed a two-month lifespan in the tenuously approving sight of the Archbishop, before the “dance of death” was banished--to a secret, underground afterlife more fruitful and longer-lived than anything _actually_ morally correct and upright could expect in Ishgard.

#03 - Wishes

The astrologians of the First Dicasterial Observatorium are hardly what one would call adequately funded and compensated, but at the end of every turn of the heavens they join the kindly-inclined of the knights and red-robed celebrants in giving freely to the war orphans, being sympathetic themselves to having nothing but wishes on stars.

#04 - Wonder

“_Oh I don’t wonder, instead I know_  
_ When my soul has departed_  
_ Into Halone’s arms I’ll go_  
_ Where every faithful heart is_”

#05 - Worry

A larger breed of aevis worries the dragoons of House Durendaire, and nearly as much their armorers, for devising a mail to protect against such violent shaking and slamming is no easy task.

#06 - Whimsy

Flights of fancy aren’t terribly approved of in the hinterlands, but to the city’s credit, they’re more encouraged there--indeed, some of the wealthier houses strain that credit to the last to have their feasts, their jewels, their mythril and brocades.

#07 - Waste/Wasteland

Harriers are all that can--all that do--glean a living in harried Mor Dhona, a last remnant of what there was before the wrath of monsters both mechanical and magical stripped it of natural life, and they do not take kindly to adventurers and scholars circling like vultures over what they and they alone refused to abandon.

#08 - Whiskey and rum

The rye crop as a whole shrinks, yet the production of rye mash increases; the writing may be in the ledgers but it’s also on the wall.

#09 - War

Centuries of dragonfire have not scorched her, centuries of privation have not starved her, centuries of war have not killed her: may these centuries never end and Eorzea never see the day when a people so tempered must find another enemy.

#10 - Weddings

“And from the butcher for the banquet you’re to fetch--and don’t you dare forget--the eft cutlets, two racks of lamb, dressed hens, doves, and larks, the suckling pig and its blood for the pudding, and the extra quantity in a vial, and--you’re not paid to ask questions, wag, now _get_!”

#11 - Birthday

Whether highborn or low, every child of Halone enters the world helpless and wailing, and every anniversary of such a shameful event should remind them that is _not_ how they ought leave it.

#12 - Blessing

“A thousand thousand souls cried in fear as Dalamud bore down on them, a thousand thousand souls screamed in Bahamut’s flames, and I will not let it be said there was no one who would hear their prayers and end the burning.”

#13 - Bias

The hyur of Ishgard have never enjoyed quite the same status as the elezen, for there is no easy entry to nobility when great houses are all elezen bridegrooms and elezen broodmares producing elezen heirs to be married themselves one day; after all, what else is hereditary aristocracy _for_?

#14 - Burning

Suggestions have been made that freezing Coerthas solid when fire is the weapon of the enemy is a demonstration that the gods are not without a sadistic sense of humor; in related news, adventurers are sought to cull the population of ravine-dwelling vodoriga, these having grown too fat and bold the past weeks.

#15 - Breathing

Through clouds of steam (formerly ice and snow) wade the infirmary-men, separating the dead from those who still add to the steam in the air.

#16 - Breaking

Hundreds of miles from the wreck of Silvertear Lake, the greatest minds of Garlemald ransack Bahamut’s remains for the Allagan leash and collar that can tame a dragon: If the empire cannot see Ishgard defeated it will see her broken.

#17 - Belief

It is not enough to _believe_ in Halone, any sunstroked southerner can do that--fear, passion, and a perfect devotion is the only idea of “faith” that has any currency above the snowline, trading plurality for security.

#18 - Balloon

The Ixal have as little love for the dragons as the Ishgardians, due to their fondness for gas-filled flying deathtraps, and so they stay south, away from the frontlines--good news for the knights, bad for the astrologians.

#19 - Balcony

Originally just a holy place on a stone spire, the city built itself around it and above it, coiling around the peak like a conch, and now the golden city overlooks the frozen bleakness of the highlands like its genteel overlook the poor in their alleys.

#20 - Bane

Dragonsbane is not an attractive herb to any of the senses, but its essence and its dried form are still highly sought after by knights of Ishgard, who drench themselves in the oil and stuff their clothes with the leaves and blossoms before battle, not out of a belief that it will save their lives but rather a macabre determination to strike at the dragons in whatever way they can, even after death.

#21 - Quiet

Not even dragonfire burns long unattended in Coerthas--heat melts the snow, sputters and stifles itself into smoke, and until the wind carries it to the vultures, all the men of the fifth regiment will have is silence.

#22 - Quirks

In a peculiarity that has become almost comic, the surviving staple livestock of Coerthas (sheep) suffer more and more bizarre indignities with every passing moon--the sutlers and levemetes have stopped asking questions and just place the shepherds’ orders for bear grease, electrum fishhooks, old ceruleum pipes and boards cut in the shape of a goobbue with polite nods and fixed smiles.

#23 - Question

A heterodox or two a year is vital to Ishgard’s continued existence, consumed like medicine, their sacrifice a small price to pay for the reassurance of orthodoxy.

#24 - Quarrel

The time-honored Ishgardian way to resolve a quarrel in front of one’s betters is with a quarrel in the back.

#25 - Quitting

There is only one reprieve from serving the See in arms, which is death--and the ranks of Garlean equites include a lot of dead men these days.

#26 - Jump

It was one of the sainted first dragoons of Ishgard who discovered the only reliable way for even the strongest lance arm to get a spear’s head to enter a dragon through the skull and exit through the throat, which just goes to show that Ishgard is one of the few places in Eorzea where madness doesn’t result in asylum stays.

#27 - Jester

Buffoonery has fallen in style while jesting falls out; buffoons do not speak, you see, therefore do not worry their wit lands them in the witchdrop.

#28 - Jousting

Ah, Durendaire’s famous chargers, bred for the joust, trained for the joust, and capable of selling in the south for a sum that would make even a monetarist blush--little wonder that House’s fortunes wax full since winter forces the See to buy what once it could grow and raise itself.

#29 - Jewel

Each one has a meaning--aquamarine signifies loyalty, peridot chastity, and so forth--and all put together mean one thing: the difference between belonging in the city, and not.

#30 - Just

What is just in the eyes of Halone and what is just in the eyes of men are not the same things, proclaim the clerics--how can a man trust his own heart to tell him what is right, when such conscience belongs to him alone and must be pacified by him alone?

#31 - Smirk

“In the name of the Archbishop, I place you and your family under custody of the Office of Inquisition until such time as the matter of your alleged payment received from known heretic shamans is resolved; a warrant for the full search and seizure of your property has been issued and will be enacted, your household will be quartered separately within the fortress for examination and questioning for the duration; fret not, for if evidence of your innocence can be found you will have nothing to fear.”

#32 - Sorrow

Even an outsider can tell when the dragon wars have begun to blaze hot once more, for even the youngest, brightest blooms the highlands have are choked and smothered in their widows’ weeds.

#33 - Stupidity

In all things the Holy See is bold, willful, and unwavering, which is both its great and formidable strength and its great and damning weakness.

#34 - Serenade

Traveling bards are not terribly approved of in Coerthas, for it is a place where too many wives see their husbands on the front nine moons of the year, and only cruel men would sing them love songs.

#35 - Sarcasm

Coerthan humor since the calamity waxes melancholic, and it seems no amount of choler raised by it shall stop the trend.

#36 - Sordid

There was a sort of splendor, in Count Dzemael’s collections, a sort of glorious abandon as the guiding principle--hungers, desires, avaricious wants, all indulged--that their current status as playthings or treasures of a host of voidsent did not take the Ishgardians entirely by surprise.

#37 - Soliloquy

Many a player’s troupe and playwright’s work is forbidden under the Holy See’s watch, some suspect because exposure to good theater might reveal exactly how performative piety is.

#38 - Sojourn

Many a sojourner travels to Coerthas to say they have seen it for themselves, the cold, the dragons, the people--the reverse happens much, much less often.

#39 - Share

Observers note Coerthas has more than its share of misery--_believers_ note it has more than its share of the strong.

#40 - Solitary

There is one thing, it is believed, that stands between the Horde and a rampage unending through Eorzea, and that one thing is incredibly unimpressed by petitions to divert attention from that to trifling matters like primals and Garlemald.

#41 - Nowhere

One can travel malms and malms through Coerthas without encountering anything more civilized than ogres, gators, beastkin, voidsent, the Horde--one _can_, but generally one _does not_.

#42 - Neutral

“The Fury’s will has always a purpose, even if She tells us not why”: The closest thing to a statement of neutrality permitted within the walls.

#43 - Nuance

Contrary to popular belief, the orthodoxy of the See is far more complex than “slavish adoration of Halone”--every hair possible to split on the subject of what is correct worship and correct practice has been split, frequently on an executioner’s blade.

#44 - Near

The Shroud is the closest neighbor of the See, and one of the least distrusted of the foreign types--it is only a pity they’ve traded halls for forests, clergy for conjury, and a worthy god for indifferent spirits.

#45 - Natural

Five years of unnatural winter have finally upended the natural order completely: even boys hunt bears in their dens, for five years asleep has left them little more than living pelts awaiting the mercy of a tanner’s rack.

#46 - Horizon

To the north lie the dragons; to the east, what the dragons broke last; to the west, the heathen birdmen; to the south, the soft and godless: Is it any wonder Ishgard will only turn her gaze heavensward?

#47 - Valiant

No one contests the valor of the knights of Ishgard; no one contests their results and keeps their tongue.

#48 - Virtuous

It is sweet to love, but fitting to serve: the dilemma of the knight in a nutshell.

#49 - Victory

The spoils of war in Ishgard are not at all like those in children’s fairy stories of dragon battles: no princess, no treasure hoard, assuredly not half the kingdom--only life itself.

#50 - Defeat

The dragons, the winter, the peasants, the armies, the See itself: Something is going to give, and very soon.


End file.
